Wild Mushroom and Spinach Pizza with Toasted Pine Nuts

 

Some of my favorite ingredients grace this pizza. Unfortunately, they're also some of my husband's least favorite.

Obviously I'm not going to eat steak or hamburger for dinner every night, and he's not going to be full with just a salad or any other 'chick food' I put in front of him. I usually compromise really well, and we have a happy balance throughout the week. However, when I saw this recipe in my latest Food Network Magazine, I wasn't going to budge. I felt kind of selfish, really, but I adore pine nuts, mushrooms, and thin-crust pizzas. How could I fit this little lover into my menu and still have a happy & full-bellied husband? (when I say full-bellied... he actually weighs around 140 and is 6'2... so maybe I need to come up with a better way to describe him being full).

That, my friends, is when the stars aligned. Ryan randomly came home for lunch, polishing off our leftovers, and said he'd have to head back to the law school until late. I knew I'd miss him, but when he left I thought about making my beloved chick pizza. Cue evil laugh. 

It was a most excellent pizza. 

I use the term pizza loosely. It was more of a flatbread. I enjoy a thick sauce, too, on my pizzas. But it was nice to keep things light this time and stick with just olive oil (if you don't want it so light, you could easily use a garlic cream sauce instead). What I loved most about this pizza was the amount of flavor it produced from so few ingredients. Ever have toasted pine nuts? It will change your life.

Let's just say half of it was gone before Ryan came home. And the Manchild wasn't to blame.

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Mushroom and Spinach Flatbread 

Ingredients: 
Thin Crust Pizza Dough - refrigerated or homemade 
4 T EVOO
1 1/2 T fresh chopped garlic
2 C packed fresh spinach leaves
1 1/2 C wild mushrooms (I used regular)
1 sweet onion, sliced thin
1/2 C pine nuts, toasted
1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 420 degrees.
2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough into a rectangle big enough to fit cookie sheet or 12 inch circle pizza pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork. With a pastry brush, brush 1 tablespoon olive oil on crust edges.
4. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add 1 tablespoon of garlic and cook the mushrooms (not crowding them, so they'll brown) until tender (about 2-3 minutes) set aside.
5. Add remaining olive oil and garlic and saute the spinach until just wilted, about 1-2 minutes.
6. Lay the spinach in a single layer on dough. Spread cooked mushrooms over spinach, and top with onion slices.
7. Bake the dough for 12 minutes (or until edges begin to brown). Remove pizza from the oven, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese an pine nuts. Bake for 2-3 minutes until cheese is melted.

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Recipe Source: Food Network Magazine, October 2012 Issue